


Dr. Marius von Raum Is Not An Expert

by alderations



Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [26]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Concussions, F/F, Injury, MLM/WLW Hostility, Mechtober, Medical Examination, Teasing, Whumptober 2020, gratuitous description of nastya sparkling like a twilight vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27219856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: Marius looks up from his book when someone knocks on the medbay door, though he doesn’t move to set the book down. It’s not like his crew ever needs actual medical treatment, and until that day comes, he reserves the right to be a lazy doctor as he sees fit. “What’s up?” he calls.(Whumptober Day 26: concussion)
Relationships: Nastya Rasputina & Marius von Raum, The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950916
Comments: 14
Kudos: 86
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Dr. Marius von Raum Is Not An Expert

Marius looks up from his book when someone knocks on the medbay door, though he doesn’t move to set the book down. It’s not like his crew ever needs actual medical treatment, and until that day comes, he reserves the right to be a lazy doctor as he sees fit. “What’s up?” he calls.

The door opens on its own, and a cable snaking down from the ceiling pulls Nastya into the room by her wrist. “Don’t wanna,” she grumbles, clearly directed at Aurora and not Marius.

Marius frowns. Nastya’s not the  _ best  _ at self-care, by any means, but it’s still unusual for Aurora to literally drag her around against her will. Besides that, her face is swollen with a thick gunmetal-gray bruise, radiating down from her left temple, and she’s swaying on her feet as if buffeted by a breeze that Marius can’t feel. “Uh, hi, Nastya.”

**She requires medical attention. Do not let her tell you otherwise.**

“What happened?” Marius asks, looking up at Aurora for direction.

Despite her insistence, Aurora doesn’t respond, so Marius turns to Nastya instead in hopes that she’s willing to explain her current state. Her eyes are almost squeezed shut, as if the light in the medbay is too much to handle. “What,” she whines when Marius tries to study her face.

“Care to explain why your face looks like… that?”

Nastya shakes her head, then winces, clearly in pain. “None of your business.”

A direct approach isn’t going to work, apparently. Marius raises a hand to her face, slowly enough that she sees him coming, and holds her chin still so he can get a good look at the contusion still spreading across her face; he knows that her blood doesn’t clot like a normal human’s, so she tends to bruise horribly, but he’s never seen it happen in real time. “I’m going to assume that you got hit in the head. Given the size of this bruise, and, um, everything else going on, you probably have a concussion.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and starts to glare up at the ceiling, only to clutch her head in apparent pain. “Bullshit,” she mutters.

**I did tell you that your symptoms were in line with that diagnosis.**

There’s… guilt, Marius thinks, in Aurora’s voice, which he doesn’t have time to unpack at the moment. “Let’s get you in bed, okay? I’d rather not have you standing around any more than necessary, you look like you’re about to topple over any second.”

He takes Nastya’s free hand and wraps his other arm around her mid-back to guide her to the nearest cot, while a few of Aurora’s doting tendrils stay wrapped around Nastya’s arm. Even then, Nastya wobbles with every step. “I’d rather go sleep in the engine,” she argues.

“Nope. No sleeping. Not until I’ve checked you out, at least.” Marius grabs Nastya’s shoulders and pushes her gently down onto the cot, then brushes her hair out of her face to examine her face again. Judging by the way her expression flickers between annoyance and affection, she’s probably having an entire conversation with Aurora that he can’t hear. “How long ago did you… sustain this injury?”

**Fifteen minutes. I brought her here as quickly as I could.**

Marius bites his lip as he does some mental math, while Nastya wobbles in place. “Fifteen minutes… that wouldn’t have anything to do with the lights flickering about  _ twenty  _ minutes ago, would it?”

Aurora is silent.

“Or weird static coming from the speakers before that? Or the entire ship suddenly tilting a few degrees to the left for no reason?”

Even though she’s clearly dizzy, Nastya scowls up at him and sets her jaw. Her whole face is starting to turn silvery now, and not just from the bruise. It’s a deeply alarming color to see on a human complexion. “Leave Aurora alone,” she grumbles.

“As I thought,” Marius chirps. “You two were—”

**I tilted ‘a few degrees to the left’ because I was turning. Spaceships do that.**

Her excuse is paper-thin, and Marius has never been one to let things go so easily. “Yeah. Sure. But the lights and the speakers? I don’t imagine that Nastya was doing any sensitive repairs, since she’s not covered in grease, and there’s no way she could’ve gotten here from the engine room in fifteen minutes.”

“I have shortcuts,” Nastya mumbles.

**You don’t have the right to be nosy just because you’re the ship’s doctor, von Raum.**

Marius gives up on trying to glean any medical knowledge from Nastya’s graying face and pouts up at the ceiling instead. “Look, I may not have a ‘medical degree’ or ‘any licensure whatsoever,’ but I still think I know more than  _ you,  _ Aurora. Last I checked, spaceships can’t go to medical school at  _ all.” _

**Don’t blame me for human close-mindedness.**

“Yeah, I’ll give you that. But it’s still helpful to know the etiology of my patient’s condition in order to actually  _ treat it.” _

Aurora doesn’t try to argue any further, which Marius considers a significant victory on his part. Satisfied with himself, he turns back to Nastya and pulls one of those nose-ear-throat light things off the wall, just to look like he’s actually observing something other than the fact that she got hit in the head. “I think I have some pain meds lying around somewhere, but otherwise, you’ll just have to rest and avoid bright lights or strenuous activity until your mechanism actually deigns to heal you. Not much to be done for a concussion.”

“I thought you might say that,” Nastya grouses.

**Please follow the doctor’s orders. Even if he’s unqualified and making things up as he goes.**

Any agreement from Aurora is enough to make Nastya deflate, apparently, because she just slumps back into the pillows once Marius is done inspecting her, screwing her eyes shut behind her off-kilter glasses. “So what, I just sit here until my brain stops hurting?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” says Marius.

She rolls her eyes with a huff. “And let me guess, you’re not going to leave me alone, either. Just gonna sit there and read your dumb romance novels to me.”

“If that’s what it takes to keep you and Aurora from trying to get frisky while you’re still recovering from the  _ current  _ mishap, then yes, I will.”

Nastya splutters at him, while the lights dim and pulse with Aurora’s embarrassed laughter. “We did—I didn’t—it’s not—”

**There’s no getting around this one, love.**

The cable that had been holding Nastya’s hand pets her head now instead, as if in apology for, presumably, whacking her in the first place. Nastya, for her part, doesn’t seem to hold it against Aurora. “If you’re just going to make fun of us, then I’ll go be concussed somewhere else.”

“No, you’re not! Continuity of care is very important,” Marius insists.

“I fucking hate you,” Nastya replies.

**Author's Note:**

> Nastya Rasputina stars in the first-ever episode of Sex Sent Me to the SpER
> 
> goofy one today ig. but! it is 9:10 PM as I write this!!!! I have so much time to, like, exist and go to bed early!!! Frankly I'm in the kind of headspace where I could've used something more angsty and... gory, but also I couldn't NOT write this once the idea got in my head lol. so here we are.
> 
> leave a comment if you liked this and commenting is your thing? every comment fuels the horrible gremlin inside me that keeps starting different WIPs instead of focusing on one background thing on the rare occasion that i have time to write stuff that isn't whumptober lol. soon, though... soon... we're almost to the end...


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